How the actuarial profession and media betrayed Albertans
Three years ago, I sent these details to all Premiers and their Finance Ministers. Only Premier Smith of Alberta has acted. She has demanded Alberta’s fair share of our $781 CPP fund. It is roughly $140 billion, of which $70 billion is surplus. When she receives it, her Alberta Pension Plan website states she will:
Fully match all future CPP pension obligations,
Give Alberta seniors as much as $10,000 each,
Reduce contributions by $1,425 per worker (and matching employer) annually,
Invest some of the remaining funds in Alberta’s economy.
If Alberta receives its fair share of the CPP, it is unclear if Albertans will be able to continue to invest their contributions with CPP Investments, the best pension fund investor in the world. This type of arrangement - one investor for numerous pension funds - is often done. OMERS, for example, invests contributions for 1,000 individual employers and 600,000 employees and retirees.
Nevertheless, because Albertans deserve the $70 billion in surplus benefits described above, Premier Smith has demanded Alberta’s share, even though contributions will be possibly invested with a return likely far inferior to CPP Investments probable 10% return.
In 2023, she hired Lifeworks, Canada’s largest actuarial firm, to calculate Alberta’s fair share of the fund.
The at-risk actuarial profession and financial industry knew that, if Albertans received these benefits from the CPP’s surplus, soon thereafter all Canadians would demand their fair share. Gradually, millions of Canadians might investigate and then demand the three benefits described above.
That helps explain why, while Alberta’s true share of the fund is roughly 16%, Lifeworks irresponsibly reported Alberta deserves an absurd 53% figure. And then they partnered with our mainstream media to betray Premier Smith, all Albertans and all Canadians.
Below shows how Canada’s mainstream media attributed the 53% claim to Premier Smith, portraying her as unhinged, un-Canadian and uncooperative.
Despite this ongoing disgraceful actuarial and media deception, Albertans know that, if Alberta receives its fair share of our CPP fund, they will receive as much as $10,000 each. Because Ottawa refuses to follow standard pension practice (probably to protect the millionaires in Toronto’s at-risk financial industry), a growing proportion of Albertans are considering separation from Canada. Town Hall Meetings confirm this. A referendum may soon decide this.
Trevor Tombe of the University of Calgary is probably Canada’s most quoted Professor of Economics. He wrote in the Globe and Mail that the idea of an Alberta Pension Plan instead of the CPP was so stupid that you could “drive a truck through the holes” in it.
After the article, I emailed him the above details and copied several of his fellow professors, notifying him that his article was depriving Albertans and Alberta of huge benefits. I told him he belonged on The Reverse Order of Canada List - a list I am compiling of those who have done the most to deprive struggling Canadians of hundreds of billions of deserved dollars.
After receiving my email, he made an about-face. At Alberta’s Town Hall Meetings, he sat beside Premier Smith, educating Albertans about the benefits of an Alberta Pension Plan.
Prime Minister Carney is the lead in this cover-up. Hopefully, he does not want to be known as the Prime Minister who let Canada split in two so that Canada’s wealthiest 1% can become wealthier at the expense of Canada’s 99%.
By March 2026, he had only given Albertans a Memorandum of Understanding and legislation that should help stimulate Alberta’s energy industry. These offerings will have little or no impact on most Albertans. However, if he declared a Canada-wide $10,000 CPP surplus payment, he could likely eliminate any impetus towards separation by Albertans.
An Alberta referendum on separation from Canada, and other issues, will take place in October 2026.
